


Voices Raised In Song

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Elvhen Ascension [7]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, Dalish Elves, Gen, Music, POV Solas (Dragon Age), Secrets, this isn't song fic so please don't worry that it's going to be awful walls of lyrical text
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-10 16:57:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20855171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “Would you teach us a song, Solas?” Lavellan asked. “The elders would fall over themselves singing your praises if you taught them a song from long ago.”“Appealing to my ego, Inquisitor?”“I can call you handsome too, if you like,” Lavellan murmured. “Next on my list is petty bribery.”





	Voices Raised In Song

**Author's Note:**

> For Solas + 24 from [this meme](https://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/post/188074119964/dragon-age-prompt-meme).

Solas didn’t think he’d ever seen so many elves in the Herald’s Rest. It was very late in the night, now, and Cabot was no longer serving, but everyone was sipping at the last of their drinks, and Solas sat in the corner beside young Cremisius, away from the crowded centre. 

There was a strange mood on the air. 

It had been a long day for all, and they had come straight to the tavern after returning - many of these elves had walked with the caravan. They were mostly from one Dalish clan, whose Keeper and First had been killed in the same attack by the Red Templars, and Lavellan had offered that they come to Skyhold and set their camp under the safety of the Inquisition’s banners whilst they contacted other clans for a new keeper.

“You say a word, Solas, I won’t speak to you for a month,” he’d hissed before Solas could even open his mouth to offer commentary, and he’d been too surprised to object when he had then become all comforting smiles, speaking with the hahrens in his easy, quiet elvish. 

And now...

Lavellan sat amidst them, a young girl in his lap, no older than four, and he was rocking her gently as he talked. She was fast asleep all ready - all of the children were asleep in their places, curled in the laps of their parents or against the side of one of the elders, but for one young boy of ten or eleven, who was sitting upon the Iron Bull’s shoulder and watching Lavellan, spellbound.

It made the Andrastians uncomfortable, seeing Lavellan amongst his people, so at ease, that much was to be certain. They saw the vallaslin all these people shared (Solas didn’t allow his fist to clench), heard them share their language, but no one had dared speak against the Dalish, not when Lavellan had led them in, when he was so plain amidst them, and yet of them. Other elves had come as though drawn to the wonder of the evening, and Solas could see the city elves who had crept in to see all of their supposed fellows in one group. There were those who were Dalish themselves - the mage that called herself Dalish; Minaeve; young Loranil - but then there were elves he recognised from the kitchens, or from the refugees, even some from the Circle.

“Do you sing, lethallin?” asked an old woman whose vallaslin marked her as property of one pledged to Elgar’nan, and Lavellan laughed softly.

“Not well, I fear, hahren,” he said. “I can carry a tune and I know well the words, but my voice is no great pleasure to hear.”

“Won’t you lead our singers, then?” the elder asked. “I shall play for you, if you will sing.”

“Suledin?”

“Suledin.”

The Dalish knew well the first verses, but Lavellan, it became clear, knew them all, and when their voices faltered his remained strong, carrying up through the tavern. He had been telling the truth - he had a voice best heard amongst a dozen others, but Solas could see the wonder in the eyes of his fellow elves, that they heard this supposed Herald sing in such easy elvish, who knew the tales and who the poetry and most of all knew the song. 

It was spellbinding.

Solas wished he could remain scornful, but hearing all those voices, raised in song... He remembered the first long walk, and how those freed people had sung, unable yet to raise their arms, so they had raised their voices instead, and oh, how _beautiful_ a music it had been, in a language not so far removed from this one, and with much the same lyrics, at that - _lath aravel ena, arla ven tu vir mahvir_\--

“You okay, messere?” Cremisius asked softly. 

Solas glanced at him, saw the expression of concern on his face, and he wondered what his own face had looked like, taken away as he’d been with memory.

“I am well, Cremisius. Thank you, for your concern.”

Cremisius nodded, sipping at his drink, and Solas sighed at the energy in the tavern now. Nostalgic, yes, but... full of hope. Such hope.

A hand touched his, squeezing it, and he looked up to meet Lavellan’s gaze, cradling as he was the young girl against his chest. She was such a small thing, so delicate, her face not yet marred by the vallaslin, freckles scattered on her nose and her brow. Solas’ heart ached, to look at her.

“Would you teach us a song, Solas?” Lavellan asked. “The elders would fall over themselves singing your praises if you taught them a song from long ago.”

“Appealing to my ego, Inquisitor?”

“I can call you handsome too, if you like,” Lavellan murmured. “Next on my list is petty bribery.”

Solas shook his head, though he squeezed Lavellan’s hand back, and it didn’t surprise him that Lavellan nodded his head in understanding, that he didn’t press or pressure for Solas to do as he said he would not. Solas stood to his feet, though, and he oughtn’t, he oughtn’t--

“What’s her name?” Solas asked quietly.

“Shanna,” Lavellan murmured. “Daughter of the clan’s late halla keeper.”

Solas put out his hands, knowing he oughtn’t, and the girl was such a tiny weight in his arms, her head falling forward against his shoulder, her arms wrapping loosely about his neck. The distant scent of ash still clung to her clothes, and Solas sighed, supporting her in his arms as he met Lavellan’s gaze.

“I’m not one of you,” Solas reminded him.

“No,” Lavellan said. “Look at you, prince among us mortal elves.” Solas set his jaw, but Lavellan was already sighing, and said, “I’m sorry, Solas. It was selfish of me to ask, I know you don’t like the Dalish.”

“It wasn’t selfish,” Solas said. “But it is not a request I can fulfill. Do you know Ma Vhenan, Arala?”

“My Love, Waiting For Me,” Lavellan murmured. “That one isn’t very commonly sung. I barely know the tune.”

“Will that suit you, then?”

“I suppose you have a lovely singing voice.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“So modest,” Lavellan murmured, but he was looking at Solas as though Solas was made of moonlight after a hundred moonless nights, as though he could barely tear his eyes away, he was so grateful to set his eyes on him. “You don’t have to.”

“For you,” Solas said. “And for the children. And I may well return to your offer of petty bribery, at that.”

“Your nobility in service of the elvhen people comes at the greatest of prices, Solas, yes, I understand,” Lavellan said, so carelessly that Solas very nearly made a noise in response, but he focused on the weight of young Shanni in his arms as he came to join the elves. So many of them. So many of them, and when all was over--

“This is Solas,” Lavellan said. “He has a better voice than I do, I promise you.”

“The H--” Solas started, but Lavellan turned such a pleading look on him that he remembered, long ago, a young man wearing the heavy weight of a scornful epithet on his back, the way it had grown into legend upon legend. That young man had been _so_ young once, hadn’t he? Solas could scarcely remember what it had been like. “Mahanon,” he murmured, adjusting the weight of the little girl in his arms, and turning a serious look to the hahrens watching him, “tells me Ma Vhenan, Arala, might offer some novelty to the night’s musical interlude.”

“Oh, I haven’t sung that since I was a child,” whispered the old woman, and when she looked at Solas with her crinkling vallaslin... “There aren’t many young men who know the song of a wandering widower.”

“I’m not quite so young as I look,” Solas murmured, and gestured for her to take up her instrument to play. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr,](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) to talk about DA in general, and definitely to recommend blogs to follow! I am open for requests (for Origins, II, and Inq). I also run a no-drama Dragon Age Discord, which [you can join here.](https://discordapp.com/invite/ttgP5v8) Please comment if you can!


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